


She

by Vacantcing



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Angst and Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Jon POV Mostly, Post Season 5
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-05
Updated: 2020-04-05
Packaged: 2021-02-28 22:34:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,359
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23474713
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Vacantcing/pseuds/Vacantcing
Summary: In his last moments he will think of red hair, blowing in the wind. Jon and Sansa, from their reunion to the War for the Dawn.
Relationships: Jon Snow/Sansa Stark
Comments: 2
Kudos: 56





	She

**Author's Note:**

> Just a little piece that has been sitting on my laptop for a while. Enjoy.

* * *

_I._ _She is Here_

Hope. Jon isn’t sure he remembers it.  
  
Coming back from the dark told him nothing laid beyond this life, and it scared him.  
  
Nothing in death, nothing left for him in this world either.  
  
Winterfell was taken. His entire family scattered or gone.  
  
Even this place was not a home to him anymore.  
  
These men were not his brothers.  
  
Jon had given his life to the Nights Watch, and even that had not been enough.  
  
 _A bastard. A wildling lover. A traitor.  
  
_ It seemed he was forever something distasteful in someone else’s mouth.  
  
They did not deserve his loyalty.  
  
 _For all the nights to come_.  
  
Jon could almost find the humour in it all.   
  
He decides he will ride South, to get warm.  
  
He will let himself do this one selfish thing. He is ready to start something new. Something for himself.  
  
A horn blast suddenly cuts through the air.  
  
He stops adjusting his collar and steps outside.  
  
The first thing Jon sees is red hair.  
  
Dirty and matted and untamed it was still the brightest thing around them.  
  
He almost couldn’t believe his eyes.  
  
 _Kissed by fire._

She was here.

* * *

_II._ _She is Sorry_

They sit in silence, but not in the same silence as they once had when they were children.  
  
Distain had been on her face back then he remembers.  
  
A careful glance upwards seeking approval from her Lady Mother who always looked straight ahead, never at him.  
  
Unspoken permission to ignore the bastard who did not belong in their home.  
  
Now she looks at him differently, marvels even.  
  
He is sure his eyes mirror hers.  
  
Surprisingly, she chooses to apologise for their childhood.  
  
Jon shrugs it off. It wasn’t hers to be sorry for.  
  
When she chokes on his ale he laughs, a sound seemingly so rare it rips up from his throat.  
  
Back then he would have thought the last person he would be laughing with was Sansa.  
  
But he is.

* * *

_III. She is Going Home_

He unfurls the pink letter with cold hands.

Around the table, everyone is watching.

He reads out the words in a low voice.

_You will watch as my dogs devour your wild little brother. You will watch as my men take turns–_

He stops and the letter is snatched from him.

Sansa reads the rest out with a steady voice but shaking hands. Jon averts his eyes.

“ _You will watch as my men take turns raping your sister.”_

Jon’s hands form fists under the table. His nails dig into his palms hard enough to draw blood.

_Signed Ramsey Bolton, Warden of the North._

His stomach rolls further.

“We have to go back,” she says.

Everything in Jon tells him that he shouldn’t do it. That the odds were far too great against them.

They have less than half the men Ramsey has. Less to no supplies. No allies. No support. _No spirit._

And worst of all, Winter was coming.

Jon is tired of fighting.

But when Sansa looks at him with those pleading eyes, he can see everything that could be in them.

He sees their home, their family.

Then she grabs his hand, pulls him towards her.

Jon almost does it all just for that look on her face.

He wants to see that look he knows has been seen so rarely these past few years.

_Hope._

Sansa thinks Jon can provide that for her but really, it was she who gives him hope – or something dangerously close to it.

He agrees.

They were going home.

* * *

_IV. She is Right_

It is the night before battle. They are arguing.

 _“You don’t know him,”_ she says.

He doesn’t, but she does.

By the Gods, Jon would give up anything for her not to, but she does.

“What should I do then?” He fires back.

He’s exhausted. He’s out of options.

“I don’t know anything about battles! Just don’t do what he wants you to do.”

Deep breathes, angry eyes.

But not really angry, not for her. Never for her.

Sansa takes deep jagged breathes.

“If Ramsey wins, I’m not going back there alive.”

She will never go back to Ramsay as long as Jon still breathes on this earth.

* * *

_V. She is Worth More_

Rickon bleeds beneath him.

Jon remembers a little boy with bright eyes with wild curls and a wolf, almost bigger than his little brother had been.

Now he cannot think of anything but the colour red pouring from that little boy’s lips.

Blood. He has seen so much of it before.

Jon vows he will never see it on anyone else he cares for again.

He thinks of red once more, but this time a different kind.

Long and blowing in the wind.

Jon starts his horse forward.

Across the battlefield Ramsay Bolton smiles.

Miles away, Sansa rides faster.

* * *

_VI. She Blooms_

Their first night back in Winterfell is not all victories and laughter and joy. It is heavy limbs and blood-stained fields and broken shields.

Jon walks through the halls of his childhood home and his heart aches at the damage and change of it all.

He tears down the flayed man banners with ready hands.

The children of Eddard Stark have come back to no celebration or merriment or familiar faces.

It is a tired win. It is a tired defeat. 

He stands in the room that was his as a child and can barely recall a simpler time when he, Robb and Theon would spar, leaping and whooping off the beds with their wooden swords.

His head throbs thinking about it. It all seemed so long ago.

Later he finds Sansa on the ramparts, staring out into the while plain of the North.

“Sansa.”

Her name rolls off his lips. They are getting used to the sound of it now.

She turns and gives him a brief smile.

“I’m having the Lord’s chamber prepared for you,” he tells her.

He frowns when she insists that he take it.

He repeats the words he has said and heard from others so many times before.

“I’m not a Stark.”

He supposes it is engrained in him now.

Sansa gives him a pointed look.

“You are to me.”

He pauses. Should those words feel gratifying years too late?

But then Jon remembers the one who speaks them are not the same from his childhood. That this is a different woman with red hair.

And that was what Sansa was now, a woman grown.

Someone who has become strong and brave and resilient.

_Porcelain to ivory to steel._

He lets himself smile.

Jon is glad he means something to her, because she was beginning to mean all to him.

He turns to her when she apologies for not telling him about the Knights of the Vale.

“We need to trust each other,” he sighs.

Jon isn’t sure why he does it, because he has only done it to one other before. He cups her head into his hands and places his lips to her forehead.

This close to her he can smell pine, fresh earth and underneath it another sweet fragrance.

Sansa looks up at him and for a moment the colour blue of her eyes is all he can see.

Blue, like a winter rose.

* * *

_VII. She is Winterfell_

He cannot ignore the letter from Daenerys Targaryen. He cannot ignore something that could help him defeat the Night King.

The northern lords are not happy. Neither is Sansa.

“You are abandoning your home. You are abandoning your people!”

She’s desperate, he can see.  
  
Jon knows what Sansa is really trying to say and he loathes himself for doing it to her.

_You are abandoning me._

_I don’t want to._

He will leave Winterfell in her delicate hands.

* * *

_VIII. She is Wanted_

He had realized this while he was in the crypts looking up at Father’s statue, silently asking for guidance.

Footsteps approach behind him.

Jon is about to greet Sansa when he turns. His smile turns into a sneer.

“You don’t belong down here,” he says darkly.

Petyr Baelish lurked behind him like a ghost.

The man speaks of Father’s bones and Catelyn Stark and past rivalries and debts to be paid.

Jon doesn’t listen to half of it. They were deaf words from a false tongue.

He means to leave without speaking further to him.

He only turns back when he hears Sansa’s name.

_I love Sansa. As I loved her mother._

Black anger boils up inside his chest.

Jon turns and slams Littlefinger hard into the wall, his forearm jamming into the older man’s throat.

“Touch my sister, and I’ll kill you myself,” he growls at him.

Baelish’s eyes are wide.

He will do it. He will do it just as he would have done to Ramsey Bolton.

He leaves the man gasping and choking in the dark.

Jon swallows thickly as he emerges from the crypts. He looks up as the great northern sky opens up before him, and there she is.

Sansa looks down at him from the ramparts, concern clear on her face.

He feels his features soften from anger at the sight of her.

 _Don’t worry,_ he wants to tell her.

His arm is heavy when he lifts it to wave goodbye.

Under the falling snow she looked like nothing he had seen before.

Jon thinks he will leave something else behind in Winterfell, but he is too afraid to say.

It beats inside his chest wildly.

Then,

_Winterfell belongs to my sister._

* * *

_IX._ _She is Not Her_

Daenerys Targaryen proves to be as beautiful as the rumors say.

She also proves to be stubborn and unyielding.

Jon recalls the faces of all the northern lords when they had crowned him King in the North.

The pride. The faith. The conviction.

He remembers looking to Sansa, wondering what she was thinking.

He remembers thinking of Robb, and of father.

He could not let them down. He won't.

He and Daenerys continue to speak in circles and Jon wants to growl out in frustration.

They were wasting time.

He was here for one thing and one thing only.

He needed Daenerys Targaryen on his side. He needs her dragons and her army. The fate of the world depended on it.

He needs to make sure she will do it.

Jon first sees it in the dragon glass caves. The way her hand lingered on his when he passed her a torch.

It’s not right, seven hells he knows.

It is a dangerous game, but he will do it for the North.

Jon stands outside her door, the tension so hard in his shoulders he feels he could snap apart at any moment.

Don’t turn around.

You need her.

You need her men.

You need her dragons.

He knocks three times.

The wood is hard against his fists.

He almost steps back at the sound of the door opening.

She was beautiful, but her eyes were the wrong colour.

* * *

_X. She is Home_

There is an itch under his skin, he can feel it crawling.

Their ship is about to dock.

Jon can almost taste Winterfell.

He is thinking of what to say to her. How to explain to Sansa everything that had happened.

He stiffens as he feels Daenerys’ hand cover his own.

“Your home. Did you miss it?”

_I miss what is in it._

“Do you miss your home?” Jon asks instead.

Daenerys stares straight ahead as she says her next words.

“This is my home.”

Jon wonders if a home could be a place you have never been to.

Jon wonders if other people could be homes.

* * *

_XI. She is Not Yours_

She is angry at him for leaving.

She is angry at him for bringing strangers into their home.

She is angry at him for giving away their home to a foreign queen.

He apologizes, and he can’t apologize enough. 

She has turned cold and unwanting. It chips at his heart.

_Sansa, please._

Another person he has let down. Jon doesn’t think he can take it.

Not her, of all people, not her.

“Are you in love with her?” Her voice is a barely a whisper.

Her face is expressionless, but he can see.

He can see the accusation beneath.

He can also see the hurt. The betrayal.

The hope… _fading_.

Jon can hardly muster the words.

“How can you say that?”

“It is only a question.”

“No, I do not love her.”

Sansa looks as if she wants to say something more, but she doesn’t.

Jon wants to.

_Not as I love yo-_

No. He can’t say it.

He sees the tears forming at the corner of her eyes. He steps forward to wipe them, but she turns away.

* * *

_XII. She is Hurt_

Jon wonders if he has done the right thing.

He has done what he had thought was the best for his people. What was best to save his home.

But the northern lords are angry. His people are unsettled at the wild Dorthraki and stone Unsullied at their door.

They cower from the dragons that light up the sky overhead.

Jon knows deep down he has done the right thing, but why did it feel like the wrong choice?

_You know why._

Sansa does not speak to him.

She brushes past him in the halls with a sweep of her gown and a dark gaze. Brienne looks almost apologetic.

He feels empty, incomplete.

Daenerys certainly notices the tension between them.

She asks him plainly one night.

“Your sister. Does she love you?”

At first Jon is taken aback.

“We are family.”

She looks almost uncomfortable herself.

“I meant is she _in_ love with you.”

Jon knows this dangerous game has led Daenerys to believe something false about them.

He regrets deceiving her. And now it seems he has involved the one person he did not wish to.

“I cannot speak for her,” was all he could get out.

 _Did she?_

“She looks at you as if you command the sun to rise in the morning and for it to set at night,” Daenerys says.

She gives a sad smile.

“I know because I looked at my husband that way.”

He turns away from her, and he can feel her gaze boring into his back.

“It doesn’t matter,” he says.

He supposes there is no reason to deny it to her. Winter was coming, and some things could just never be.

* * *

_XIII._ _She Waits  
_

_  
_ It was going to happen soon. It was all going to come to a crescendo.

Jon could feel it in his bones.

His people were nervous and wary and tired. Hushed murmurs float between stone walls.

Were they prepared?

Was all they had done, enough?

Could they defeat the Night King?

Could they survive to the next dawn?

Bran sits and watches.

Arya sharpens her swords.

Daenerys and her dragons are restless.

Jon tries to placate her, but his mind often wanders to another.

Sansa prepares Winterfell for the battle as much as she can.

Coffins are removed from the crypts. Men are given armour and weapons. Women are handed clothes and food.

There is silence when Jamie Lannister arrives without an army.

It wasn’t much, but battles have been won against greater odds.

Jon prays they make it to the next day as Samwell Tarly rides through Winterfell’s gates, an old book in his hands.

* * *

_XIV. She is All_

Jon stares at Bran, trying to understand what he has just said.

He is not Ned Stark’s son.

He is not Ned Stark’s son.

Then,

She is not his sister.

Jon feels as if his stomach and head will roll at the same time.

He clutches the nearest tree for support.

Sansa looks at him with anxious eyes. 

Arya is still but her hands are shaking.

Bran looks straight ahead.

He is a Targaryen.

_Blood of a dragon._

Then why could he still feel his wolf blood calling?

Sansa reaches for him, but he turns away.

* * *

_XV. She Knows_

He has locked himself away for two days.

They are all worried for him.

Sansa paces when meals are bought back to the kitchen, untouched.

She had been hard on him, she knows.

A jealous heart made for a jealous tongue.

She regrets how she spoke to him.

When Daenerys Targaryen offers to speak to him, Sansa almost bares her teeth.

Sansa has known him his entire life, what could this stranger have to say to her brother?

_That they were the last Targaryens._

And that Jon was her brother no more.

Sansa swallowed at the thought.

Half-brother.

It had been a haunting thing. Another thing that doomed her from what she wanted.

It was wrong. _She_ was wrong.

Then came his choices that she could not understand.

Giving up the North, for Daenerys.

It had taken her a long time to realize that he had given up the North, to save the North.

And she realizes that she loved him for it.

She knocks on his door, once.

What lay on the other side was the only thing she wanted in this entire rotten world.

It had been him.

Alayne Stone had known it. Petyr Baelish had known it.

Father had known it in his own way, too.

_Someone who is brave and gentle and strong._

The door opens.

Those eyes were the only ones she has truly ever seen.

* * *

_XVI. She is His_

They share their first kiss under the Weirwood tree.

Another moment, another eve before battle.

If Jon was to fall against the Night King, he wants to remember one piece of happiness he could hold onto.

Sansa clutches at his arms like a vice.

 _Jon Targaryen,_ she half laughs and half cries.

Perhaps the prince she has always hoped for.

Jon doesn’t want to let go, but he has to.

He vows he will protect his people, his home and most importantly, the woman at the heart of it.

In his last moments he will think of red hair, blowing in the wind.

* * *

_XVII. And He is Mine_

In the dark, Sansa sits, and waits.

The night had been long and filled with terror.

The air smelled of death and decay and blood even down in the crypts. 

She had prayed and cried and pleaded with the gods to keep everyone safe.

The sounds that came from above had been a nightmare.

Inhuman growls and screams and clashing swords will forever haunt her nights.

But it has been quiet above for some time now.

Everyone looks to each other for guidance.

_Is it safe? Is it over?_

Tyrion Lannister offers her another drink from his flask.

She takes it and does not choke on the bitter taste.

Then, the crypt door opens.

No one makes a sound as they watch a young solider swaying at the top of the stairs, covered in dirt and blood.

“It’s over. We’ve won,” he heaves out.

A chorus of cries of joy rip among the crowd as everyone leaps to their feet.

Sansa’s legs are numb as she follows the other women and children up the stairs.

The light momentarily blinds her as she looks up as the great northern sky opens up before her, and there they are.

He is bloody and beaten and bruised but by the gods, there he is.

Sansa’s heart nearly stops at the sight of him.

Jon and Arya are speaking, and they are holding each other close.

Arya has a silver dagger in her hand, holding it so tightly her knuckles bloom white.

The force in which Sansa embraces them nearly knocks them all off their feet.

She’s crying and laughing as they hold each other close.

She doesn’t stop Jon when his lips crash onto hers.

He tastes like everything she has ever wanted. 

Freedom.

Life.

_Love._

“It’s over,” he cries. It is rough and ragged but his voice is like honey, the sweetest sound Sansa has ever heard.

“It’s over,” she laughs, tears on both her cheeks.

She takes his hand and squeezes it, hard. 

It was over, but it is just beginning for them.

_Fin_


End file.
